Emily Wells: Regards to the End

Multi-disciplinary artist Emily Wells will create an evocative one-night experience merging pop, chamber music, and visual art in a live performance of Regards to the End, her 2022 album. This performance will be the fullest live realization to date of the ambitious set of 10 works presented as expanded cinema with 12-piece orchestration. Regards to the End is informed by the lives and work of American choreographers and visual artists, particularly those with ties to the AIDS crisis working in the 1980s and 1990s (Kiki Smith, Bill T. Jones, Arnie Zane, David Wojnarowicz, Alvin Baltrop, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Jenny Holzer, Nayland Blake). Centrally, the work is built from the question, “What can artists working at the beginning of the AIDS crisis teach us about how to be artists, people, living and working during climate catastrophe?” The answers often point to a simple truth: we need each other.

This evening will feature Wells, Boston Symphony Orchestra musicians, and Emily’s video work, which utilizes archival footage of early AIDS activism in America, clips of modern and contemporary dance, and captured moments of extreme climate events. She will also be joined on stage by drummer and composer Ian Chang and multi-instrumentalist and singer David Baldwin. The show will be lit and designed by Tuçe Yasak.